We are delighted to announce that Western University, Canada, has joined our Three-Year Fixed Term Memberships Program. Western is the latest institution to sign up to the program which offers an innovative alternative to Article Processing Charges for Open Access. Under the agreement, the cost of Three-Year Memberships for Western University-affiliated authors are waived, meaning no out-of-pocket fees for faculty members to publish in PeerJ’s seven journals. 

“Open access publishing is a priority for Western Libraries, and we are pleased to now offer the PeerJ membership to our researchers. We are committed to supporting cost-effective open access initiatives where our faculty are contributing or publishing. We want to make open access publishing more accessible to our researchers, and PeerJ is helping us do that,” writes Kristin Hoffmann, Research and Scholarly Communication Librarian at Western Libraries. 

Western University and Western Libraries are clearly committed to the principles of Open Access, as well as innovative, cost-effective routes to open publishing such as our Three-Year Memberships program. We are excited to welcome Western to the PeerJ community and look forward to working with their researchers across our seven journals. They are the fifth institution to provide Three Year Membership as an Open Access option to their faculty, following the University of California, Berkeley, University of Ottawa, Iowa State University and the University of Sussex. 

Compared to the astronomical APC fees of many other publishers, Memberships provide great value for money, and allow more authors to publish Open Access. We remain committed to promoting Memberships as the low-cost, sustainable alternative to Article Processing Charge, and welcome inquiries about the program from other universities. PeerJ Three Year Fixed Term Memberships, priced at $239 per author, are valid from the date of an author’s first publication and for a further 36 months, during which they can publish a total of three articles at any point, giving authors more flexibility as to when, and how often, they publish. When authors use their full complement of three publications, the per-author cost borne by Western averages out at under $80/article. Under the agreement, all co-authors must hold a PeerJ Membership in order to publish; any Memberships previously held by Western-affiliated authors remain valid. Authors can still choose to pay via APC fees if they prefer.